Fiddling with Iray skin settings...

Comments

That's true, I should've thought of that (I was trying to match the lighting from the picture of Olympia that zarcondeegrissom posted before). Even lit from the side, I barely see any difference from 0.45 to 2, but now it looks like 5 is definitely too much. In general I think the edges of the pores are a little too blurry, which I guess comes from SSS, but I haven't been successful in tweaking those settings either...

Okay, I got my hair settings together (I've been distracted by hockey).

Some notes:

Translucence can be spotty. If you're using a hair where the hair from the back of the neck is very noticeable from the front, it might be best to turn it off (This is more a problem with the nature of trans-mapped hair)

I replace all hair textures with OOT's since, it makes it easier for me to make presets and get predictable results I also go into the image editor and set the horizontal tiling to 2 or higher to make it crisper (when did daz add that? its made my life so much easier. I used to do do many weird tricks to try to tile textures without effecting opacity) You don't have to do that, but if you have any favorite hair textures that are tillable, I recommend it

These settings are for brown hair, for blond hair I have to turn the spec way up.

The other reason I recommend tiling textures is editing purposes, I did 99% of the setup on a sphere, It renders quickly, so its easy to have your aux view in rendered mode, and its way easier to see which way the anisotropy is actually going.

The other image is the displacement map I'm using it makes the hair strandier, and is especially useful on flatter hairs. Watch out for the displacement on hairs that have modeled strands, I forgot to turn down the subD on the strands on one of goldtassel's hairs and slowed my computer to a crawl. When I turned it off for the strands it did look fantastic though.

That's true, I should've thought of that (I was trying to match the lighting from the picture of Olympia that zarcondeegrissom posted before). Even lit from the side, I barely see any difference from 0.45 to 2, but now it looks like 5 is definitely too much. In general I think the edges of the pores are a little too blurry, which I guess comes from SSS, but I haven't been successful in tweaking those settings either...

well, I think light levels play a part as well as colors for the Daz Promos like that as well.

I have a key light on the floor aimed up at the figures, and a 'WhiteSun' on the other side aimed down from the ceiling, explicitly for that detail. The lower front Omni area light (40 foot soft box) is soly to mimic light bouncing off the floor, it is incredibly dim by the way, and not needed in Iray. The upper front one, well it is not directly in-front of the figures. Most of the light comes from the 'WhiteSun' spot light, and the upper soft-boxes. The lower key is just there for accent and to soften harsh chin and nose shadows a tad.

Colored lights, for example, I tried for a month off and on to get a render of Aiko6 that looked remotely like her promo in the yellow bow dress, lol. To almost quote SickleYield. Yellows and red lights bring out a nice skin color and hide details. Blue lights bring out details, yet make skin look less worm and soft looking. They had used allot of color in that Aiko6 promo, that could only be mimicked by changing the surface backing colors on the hair, dress, etc, lol.
(EDIT)
Also I do have a spot behind and off to the side (in a corner) for that halo effect. And there is a 40-foot soft box behind the figures up at the ceiling (added a second screen-cap for that, and a 3delight render of Olympia6 and FW Eve in that room. ALL white lights by the way, it's a test chamber).

Hmm, I'm occasionally getting some seams across material zones with characters who have glossy skin. The weird part is that it only happens sometimes, from certain angles. For instance, in one of my images, there was a very obvious seam with the specularity between a character's chest and shoulders, but nowhere else. I fixed it by increasing his glossy layered weight from 0.2 to 0.5, but that was the only material zone in which I used the new value. All others were still set to 0.2. The two materials had exactly the same setting otherwise, and they were both using the same character's texture maps in the same places (Although, not exactly the same maps, of course. One used the torso textures, and the other the limbs).

Is there no other option except trial and error for this particular problem? Is anyone else experiencing this?

Edit: For the record, it's barely noticeable if I change his skin color to white, but it's still there.

Edit: I think this is just a case of the limbs' specular map not lining up perfectly with the torso's. If I remove all of the specular maps, there is no seam. I don't know why I didn't notice it before, though.

The texture I'm using is the Base Male texture, which was originally Phillip M5 converted to Genesis 2 Base Male UVs. Interestingly, if I change his textures to use the M5 version of the textures, along with changing his UV set to M5, there is no seam. It would seem the texture wasn't converted perfectly, at least for the limbs' specular maps.

It may have to do with texture compression (under render settings>advanced) It has been mentioned as a problem on the beta thread, particularly with displacement. I forget what the default is, but try turning it up to 2048 or 4096 and see if that helps.

It may have to do with texture compression (under render settings>advanced) It has been mentioned as a problem on the beta thread, particularly with displacement. I forget what the default is, but try turning it up to 2048 or 4096 and see if that helps.

With the original texture maps, the problem still exists even with those settings. But I didn't know about them before, so thanks for pointing them out to me. I think the issue is just with the specular maps not lining up correctly, so the only solution is just to use different textures. I'm just glad there is an easy solution, and it's not just some random thing.

Did you check with your Diffuse channel and make sure that the skin maps are all sharing the same exact color? That's happened to me in the past where I THOUGHT all was set to white but for some reason the limbs had an off white, thus got the seams issue.

Edit: I think this is just a case of the limbs' specular map not lining up perfectly with the torso's. If I remove all of the specular maps, there is no seam. I don't know why I didn't notice it before, though.

The texture I'm using is the Base Male texture, which was originally Phillip M5 converted to Genesis 2 Base Male UVs. Interestingly, if I change his textures to use the M5 version of the textures, along with changing his UV set to M5, there is no seam. It would seem the texture wasn't converted perfectly, at least for the limbs' specular maps.

I've seen this sort of thing before in 3Delight. I don't think the situation is Iray specific. I think its some difference in the specular maps. SInce there are no standards for specular maps, and their quality and efficacy vary, I'm surprised we don't see more of this.

In my experiments with Iray, any time I mix displacement with translucency and/or SSS, I get annoying seams.

Check your bump and specular maps, some skins use merchant resources that have darker areas at the seams. If it's your specular map, try switching out for the bump map and tone it down some by making the color a darker grey.

Did you check with your Diffuse channel and make sure that the skin maps are all sharing the same exact color? That's happened to me in the past where I THOUGHT all was set to white but for some reason the limbs had an off white, thus got the seams issue. ]

Yeah, they're all the same color. I selected all the skin materials and applied the color. The old Phillip maps don't give me any problem (the ones for M5), only the new ones (the Base Male ones) do, so I'm just not going to use those if I have a highly specular skin.

Hmm, I'm occasionally getting some seams across material zones with characters who have glossy skin. The weird part is that it only happens sometimes, from certain angles. For instance, in one of my images, there was a very obvious seam with the specularity between a character's chest and shoulders, but nowhere else. I fixed it by increasing his glossy layered weight from 0.2 to 0.5, but that was the only material zone in which I used the new value. All others were still set to 0.2. The two materials had exactly the same setting otherwise, and they were both using the same character's texture maps in the same places (Although, not exactly the same maps, of course. One used the torso textures, and the other the limbs).

Is there no other option except trial and error for this particular problem? Is anyone else experiencing this?

Edit: For the record, it's barely noticeable if I change his skin color to white, but it's still there.

I just found the same thing with some SSS maps made for M5. On close examination of the maps it is quite obvious that there are significant differences in the edges. The torso is almost pure white, where the seams along the limbs maps are definitely not. Switch to different maps, problem goes away.

Alas... we are seeing things that were not always obvious in 3Delight but become more pronounced with Iray. (i saw the same behavior with some specular maps when exported to LuxRender)

Alas... we are seeing things that were not always obvious in 3Delight but become more pronounced with Iray. (i saw the same behavior with some specular maps when exported to LuxRender)

They were there in 3DL, to..but harder to notice.

Map quality is going to become a major issue. Any 'photoreal' renderer is going to make the flaws stand out. Just smudging the edges and having contrasting backgrounds just isn't going to cut it any longer. Just desaturating and playing with levels isn't going to cut it any longer (as if it ever really did). Too dark/too light...nope. Many other things that have been let slide...going to stand out a lot.

Some more experimentation....I finally got a more noticeable SSS effect by increasing translucency, but the skin tone became a bit darker as a side-effect. Need to play with the translucency and transmission colors more. What I did this time:

Some more experimentation....I finally got a more noticeable SSS effect by increasing translucency, but the skin tone became a bit darker as a side-effect. Need to play with the translucency and transmission colors more. What I did this time:

This is why a SSS map would be required so that you could fine tune the transparency having it apply more translucency in some areas, and less in others.

Some more experimentation....I finally got a more noticeable SSS effect by increasing translucency, but the skin tone became a bit darker as a side-effect. Need to play with the translucency and transmission colors more. What I did this time:

This is why a SSS map would be required so that you could fine tune the transparency having it apply more translucency in some areas, and less in others.

Rawn Also, I still think, Olympia's mats are for a slightly darker tone, then what Iray is doing with her mats (Don't get me wrong, your renders are incredibly good, and it's only a matter of taste). I finally have an Iray capable GPU, so after fixing up a current project, I hope to be able to look at this in more depth (And not be CPU bound with Iray).